At the height of the Cold War, the Canadian government crafted a top-secret plan to detain thousands of citizens with Communist links in the event of a national security threat, according to a joint CBC/Radio-Canada investigation.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

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The secret contingency plan, called PROFUNC, allowed police to round up and indefinitely detain Canadians believed to be Communist sympathizers.

The CBC’s The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada’s Enquête investigative programs have unearthed troubling details about PROFUNC, which stands for PROminent FUNCtionaries of the Communist Party.

The investigation has discovered that information gathered under PROFUNC’s mandate may have been used during the 1970 October Crisis, when Canada invoked the War Measures Act and suspended civil liberties to end escalating violence sowed by the Front de Libération du Québec, known as the FLQ.